Each time a significant awards ceremony draws close, you'll find a demand to include additional classifications to recognize underappreciated efforts and fill the passions of enthusiasts with niche passions.
A fellow writer has already made supporting a scary games classification. That would rule. Equally deserving are tabletop games, this being a passionate advocate's mission. However, I must insist when I prioritize because like all dedicated enthusiasts, there's a strong justification backing this proposal remains most pressing above others. The demand is this: There should be a category for puzzle games.
Organizing Gaming Categories
Categorizing art by genre defies precise measurement; opinions vary greatly, and it will always spark debates concluding with vague boundaries. This explains why movie academies don’t do it. Yet it remains an essential concession within the realm of gaming, that demonstrate such variety it's challenging to consider them a single creative category.
For comprehensive acknowledgment of interactive entertainment excellence to be recognized, while allowing diverse titles to compete fairly, classification by type becomes crucial.
Current Gaming Award Categories
Prominent interactive entertainment events presently include classifications covering Action, Adventure-action titles, RPG experiences, Combat games, Sim/Strategy, plus athletic and racing experiences. Together, these six categories effectively encompass many game types, and you can find room accommodating various experiences.
Not so for logic-based experiences. There’s simply nowhere to accommodate them. Consider three of outstanding current releases, all very different: the architectural riddles in a particular game, the pulse-pounding block-matching of another game, and the sweetly sociological logic puzzles of a third title. Where could they possibly go within current classifications? Unfortunately, nowhere.
Recognition Challenges
There are dozens excellent brain-teasers released every year lacking appropriate categories in entertainment awards, if they accidentally match classification types such as Mobile Game, Virtual reality experiences, or the intensely contested independent game categories.
- An iconic brain-teaser wasn’t nominated for anything that year
- Another creative title missed out that year
- A beloved organization game received no acknowledgment that year
- Just some logic titles barely qualified for niche award types
Importance of Logic Titles
Frequently they represent modest productions, however the design in brain-teasers carries substantial weight. Famous handheld logic titles rank among the most-played games globally maintaining this status for over a decade.
The iconic tile-matching title challenges well-known building titles for the title of best-selling game of all time; it additionally competes as greatest title ever. Puzzle games are foundational to the art of video games, and they are in conversation across multiple categories.
Recommendation and Reasoning
Puzzle games wouldn’t have this problem. One could readily select multiple candidates engaging, different, qualified experiences each ceremony simply — actually, with challenge, given the need to exclude many worthy titles.
To emphasize again, these represent titles lacking appropriate categories at major gaming awards. Brain-teaser creators function at the hard edge of video game design, developing some of essential manifestations of the video game form. Similar to film action specialists, they deserve recognition. We shouldn't delay 35 years.